Overview: Music has always been important to me and in that, I’m not alone. It’s one of those things that the whole world is connected by. However, there are at least hundreds of different understandings of how people interpret music. 

To see art under the lens of life is the main objective of this project. You can bring this way of learning anywhere you go, but I decided to start with our neighboring country that despite being a car drive away, we don’t know much about them culturally. 85% of French Canadians reside in Quebec. For me, I wanted to dig deeper into understanding their known motivation to keep their culture alive and how much they’ve relied on the arts in working on cultural preservation. Throughout this experience, I hope to have a better understanding and grasp of artistic identity’s connection to people. Music transcends language and in my opinion, is one of the most powerful art forms created. In the instance of my project, instruments used by the Mi’kmaq are spiritual and holy objects. For French Canadians, the fiddle has been a stable instrument through their polka-like arrangement of music, interestingly enough having not a lot of commonalities to French European music. Exploring all these concepts is the main idea. My project will fill each of the buckets that have been given to seniors. For service and community, I’ll be working with many different types of people in the industry of arts and music. I have planned interviews with local musicians in Gaspe and people of the Mi’kmaq tribe; the first nation people of Quebec. For the last two buckets, my project is a fusion of creative and academic. My project is music-based with mainly academic work behind it. Writing, recordings, and communication about the arts are elements I’d be using. I think my main interest in this project can be associated with not just Canada but a lot of different places around the world. My interest in ethnomusicology has motivated me in taking interest in this project. I hope to explore the topic more in-depth in the future. 

Measure of Success: An outcome that would indicate that my experience has been successful would be coming back home with an open state of mind on how people intake the art of music. I am studying music in the fall and so on and being able to come from this project being an academic point of view on music and to bring it into my actual playing will be something I look forward to doing and measuring my success on. I’m excited to see what I’ve learned and how I’ve come through as a musician through this project and how it impacts me in the future.